Lost in all this controversy over NY Post cartoonist Sean Delonas' ham-handed monkey bigot hackery is this: will this national uproar hurt the sales of Delonas' kiddie book? That would be the real tragedy.

Delonas' real crime is that he's just not funny. Yes, he's clearly a garden-variety ignorant white dude bigot with an incredibly deep-seated fear of somebody calling him gay; but if he were funny, he'd be able to get away with that to a much greater extent. He's not funny, so he just looks pitiful, protected by other soft, paunchy ignorant white dude bigots like Col Allan, all with sour faces and too much self-justification, like so many sad old newspaper barflies.

But you don't have to be funny to write children's books! So Delonas did just that, with Scuttle's Big Wish. Currently #392,359 on Amazon! His son helped him with the plot, according to a 2006 review:

One day, Scuttle hears a cry and discovers that a golden beetle is trapped in a spider's web. Daring to save the beetle, in spite of constant death threats from his nemesis Pounce the cat, he frees the insect.

Sure enough, the beetle grants Scuttle his most fervent wish, that everything he touches be turned into cheese. In short order, Scuttle becomes fatter and fatter and also starts to die from thirst and hunger. Even Tweet turns into cheese.

Something quite familiar about that theme, I just can't put a finger on it....